Park Chan-wook's New Film 'No Other Choice' Challenges the Oscars

Park Chan-wook's new film 〈No Other Choice〉 will be submitted as the Korean representative for the International Feature Film category at the Academy Awards (Oscars) taking place in March next year.

The Korean Film Council announced on the 3rd that 〈No Other Choice〉 has been selected as the Korean representative for the Academy International Feature Film category. This follows this year's 〈12.12: THE DAY〉, marking Korea's consecutive challenge in this category.

The selection committee stated, "Considering all evaluation criteria including stable cinematic completeness, the theme of 'dismissal' which is a contemporary concern, the excellent performances of good actors, and the capable North American distributor, we judged it to be the most competitive among the submitted works." They also evaluated it as "a work that the Academy will cheer for, crafted with humor from a tragedy that the world can empathize with."

〈No Other Choice〉 deals with the story of a laid-off head of the family, Man-soo (played by Lee Byung-hun), who embarks on a journey to find re-employment. It is based on Donald Westlake's novel 「The Ax」.

This work was invited to the competition section of the 82nd Venice Film Festival and was premiered for the first time in the world on the 29th of last month. Major overseas media have been giving it positive reviews, and there are predictions that it will be nominated in major categories at next year's Academy Awards.